Browsing all posts in "delivery".
In Pain Shall She Bring Forth Children
Whoever wrote that book of ancient folktales we call the “Old Testament” was intent on explaining how things came to be. Within her explanatory notes, we find that tale of Adam, Eve, a certain serpent, and an apple. Why a kind, decent, loving God would stick a tree in the middle of paradise with a [...]
The Family Business of the Forceps
Before the seventeenth century, when a baby wouldn’t come out, your choices were limited. Since antiquity, the preferred method of dealing with a stalled labor was podalic version. Most midwives, we think, could perform podalic version, in which the baby was turned from head-down to foot-down. This gave the deliverer something to grab onto. Various [...]
Why Don’t We Stock Pepper in L&D?
“When God the creator of the universe in the first establishment of the world differentiated the individual natures of things each according to its kind, He endowed human nature above all other things with a singular dignity, giving to it above the condition of all other animals freedom of reason and intellect. And wishing to [...]
Greek Maternity, or Why French Aristrocrats Cut Off Their Left Testicle
I promised you the history of motherhood, and by golly, that’s what you’re going to get. Hippocrates believed that the uterus had two sides, possibly with a septum in the center. While this is present in approximately 3% of the human female population (and does not appear to affect fertility), it is not considered normal [...]
The One True God v. The Goddess (NefHxMotherhood)
In contrast to the sexually permissive society that was ancient Babylon, we have the ancient Hebrews (who incidentally were conquered by Babylon in 586 BCE. Not that I’m making any value judgments here). While the ancient Babylonian women had rights and privileges, the predominant mood of the Hebrews was closer to misogyny. In the process [...]
Mummies and Mommies–NefHxMotherhood
Besides the medical papyri from ancient Egypt, we have temple decorations and mummies. From the temple reliefs, we know that the birth of future pharaohs was attended by the deities. Bes, the leonine ugly dwarf, danced and leapt around, to ward off evil spirits. T’wart (or Thoeris), represented by a pregnant hippo, was essentially the [...]
The Couvade (NefHxMotherhood)
cooljinny, stock.xchng.com Exactly when man figured out that he had some involvement in this magic thing called “birth” is lost to the pages of history. By the time we get to written records (ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia), man had not only found his role, but he had completely co-opted it. Man, in his great wisdom, [...]
Whose Bright Idea Was It to Let Husbands in the Delivery Room?
Way back, at the dawn of time, motherhood was women’s work. Women not only delivered the babies; they also delivered the babies.
Somewhere around the 16th century, men got it into their little pea brains that they could do a better job, and the man-midwife was born.
It all went downhill from there.
